Finance
How market’s private credit crisis fears are spreading to bond ETFs
Fears of a private credit crisis are rising as firms at the heart of the growing, but less liquid and less transparent, bond market face investor redemptions. That stress test has arrived just as private loans became more prevalent in the ETF market. It was a little over a year ago that the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first ETF branded as a private credit fund.
For ETF investors, the good news it that the risks represented by the asset class are showing up in a more controlled way, as ETFs invest directly in private credit issues are still limited in how much exposure they can have to the asset class — up to, but not exceeding 35%.
Some other, older ETF products that are tied to private credit get indirect exposure only, according to Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge. They use vehicles like business development companies and closed end funds that primarily invest in the private credit sector. While that adds liquidity compared to holding private loans directly, it is not without investor concern in the current environment.
The VanEck BDC Income ETF (BIZD), which has roughly $1.5 billion in assets and dates back to 2013, is down 13% since the start of the year. The reason is clear: among BIZD’s top holdings are publicly traded shares of some of the private credit managers in the news, including Blue Owl Capital and Ares Capital. Blue Owl shares are down over 46% this year.
The Simplify VettaFi Private Credit Strategy ETF (PCR) is down around 20% in the past year and also focused its investments in business development companies and closed end funds.
PCR YTD
Liquidity remains the main concern for investors, and private credit is not meant for daily trading the way ETFs are, which has resulted in issues between private credit managers and investors wanting to pull out their funds. But in the ETF space, daily liquidity and trading always give investors the option to sell, though it may come at a cost.
“You can get out, you’re just going to pay or you’re going to sell at a discount to net asset value,” Rosenbluth said.
BIZD closed at a discount to its net asset value 37 times in calendar year 2025, and so far, 12 times this year.
Private credit funds, meanwhile, often restrict withdrawals during times of stress. “You’re gating because you said we can’t have a run on the bank,” Rosenbluth said.
Limits on redemptions help prevent forced selling and instability, though they don’t necessarily help to calm market fears.
State Street‘s private credit ETFs, developed with alternative investments manager Apollo Global and which included the first private credit branded ETF approved by the SEC, are examples of how access is being structured within ETFs. The State Street IG Public & Private Credit ETF (PRIV) was the first of its kind, approved by the SEC in February 2025. The State Street Short Duration IG Public & Private Credit ETF (PRSD) launched later in 2025.
These funds are meant to outperform standard bond benchmarks by including investment-grade private credit, and can both hold as much as 35% in private credit issues, or at times less than 10%. According to the State Street ETF web site, only one of PRIV’s current top 10 holdings is private credit, with treasury and mortgage-backed securities dominating in the top 10. PRSD’s top holdings are a mix of government, mortgage and currency holdings.
Performance of State Street’s private credit ETF, the first approved by the SEC, over the past year versus the aggregate bond index.
PRIV has $831 million assets under management; PRSD is much smaller, at $48 million in assets under management. Both have seen relatively flat performance since the beginning of the year. Both PRIV and PRSD hold slightly over 20% of assets in Apollo-sourced investments, according to State Street data.
Jeffrey Rosenberg, systematic fixed income senior portfolio manager at BlackRock, who runs a long-short strategy in an ETF wrapper, says private credit investing issues are one example of how much ETFs have changed fixed income markets. As active portfolio managers in the bond market meet more investors through ETFs, it allows them more precision in targeting specific parts of the credit market. “They’ve just completely changed how liquidity provisioning, price discovery … how the ecosystem of credit market-making functions in a modern credit market,” he said on “ETF Edge.”
Money has been on the move during the recent market volatility, according to VettaFi’s Rosenbluth, with ETF investors “taking some risk off” and moving from longer-duration bond funds into shorter-duration funds.
The biggest systemic risk in private credit markets comes from the asset-liability mismatch. “The run on the bank,” BlackRock’s Rosenberg said. But it is his view that this type of risk is less pronounced today since many private credit vehicles limit liquidity by design. That cannot eliminate risk, but can make the risks surface more gradually, Rosenberg explained, saying impact could take place over longer time horizons as companies face refinancing at higher rates.
Both Rosenbluth and Rosenberg explained that the result of this is a system that absorbs shock differently. Private credit funds may restrict redemptions and ETFs allow for continuous trading with real-time price adjustments — allowing markets to keep functioning while reflecting stress as it develops. Both approaches, they say, aim to prevent disorderly outcomes.
CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Jeffrey Rosenberg’s name.
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For the generation that should be in its “peak savings years,” the prospect of retiring on time has shifted from a plan to a prayer.
A newly released Employee Financial Wellness Survey by PwC found that nearly 50% of Gen X employees are pushing back their retirement dates, citing stagnant wages, rising everyday costs, and a lack of liquid savings.
Additionally, only 38% of Gen Xers believe they can retire when they originally planned, and more than half of this demographic expect to withdraw funds from their retirement accounts early to cover short-term costs.
“For employers, this isn’t a future problem. Financial anxiety during peak career years can affect focus and engagement,” PwC researchers write. “If the risks are clear, the question is why more employees aren’t taking action. It’s not a lack of desire. Most employees want stability, confidence and to feel in control. But many don’t feel equipped to get there.”
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The primary driver of this retirement delay is the inability to save as inflation eats away at monthly expenses, the report notes. Twenty-five percent of the total workforce is living without a buffer, and nearly half cannot meet basic household expenses.
Nearly half of Gen X workers are delaying retirement, PwC reports. (Getty Images)
“[Forty-nine percent] say their compensation isn’t keeping up with costs. As expenses rise faster than income, day-to-day trade-offs are becoming routine. Employees aren’t just feeling squeezed. They’re making difficult financial decisions to stay afloat,” the PwC report continues..
As a result, when Gen Xers cannot afford to leave their current jobs, the entire corporate ladder stalls, creating business risks, with companies facing higher costs as older talent remains on payroll longer than expected.
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“When employees dip into retirement funds early or delay retirement altogether, it affects more than personal finances and retirement plan leakage,” the report says. “It may also influence workforce planning, healthcare costs, succession timing and overall organizational stability.”
The findings also show that a significant portion – 41% – of the workforce feel they were never given the tools to manage a crisis of this magnitude, leading to a sense of being “overwhelmed” by financial choices.
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PwC provided a call to action for employees and their employers, encouraging them to reduce the stigma around financial education, foster trust through human coaches, emphasize skill building and focus on day-to-day finances before long-term goals.
“Employees define financial wellness simply: less stress, fewer surprises and the freedom to make financial choices with confidence. For employers, that’s the opportunity.”
Cybersecurity and enterprise software stocks have been market dogs in 2026, with fears that AI will wipe out a wide range of companies in the enterprise space dominating the narrative. But they snapped a brutal losing streak this past week, joining in the broader market rally that saw all losses from the U.S.-Iran war regained by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500.
Cybersecurity has been “a victim of some of the AI-related headlines,” Christian Magoon, Amplify ETFs CEO, said on this week’s “ETF Edge.”
It wasn’t just niche cybersecurity names. Take Microsoft, for example, which was recently down close to 20% for the year. Its shares surged last week by 13%.
A big driver of the pummeling in software stocks was a rotation within tech by investors to AI infrastructure and semiconductors and some other names in large-cap tech, Magoon said, and since cybersecurity stocks and ETFs are heavily weighted towards software companies, they were left behind even as those businesses continue to grow on a fundamental basis.
But Wall Street now has become more bullish with the stocks at lower levels. Brent Thill, Jefferies tech analyst, said last week that the worst may be over for software stocks. “I think that this concept that software is dead, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are going to kill the entire industry, is just over-exaggerated,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday.
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry wrote in a Substack post on Wednesday that he is becoming bullish about software stocks after the recent selloff. “Software stocks remain interesting because of accelerated extreme declines last week arising from a reflexive positive feedback loop between falling software stocks and changes in the market for their bank debt,” he wrote.
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG), is down about 12% since the beginning of the year, with top holdings including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Akamai Technologies and CrowdStrike. But BUG was up 12% last week. The First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) is down 6% for the year, but up 9% in the past week.
Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens reiterated an “overweight” rating on Palo Alto Networks which helped the stock pop 7% — it is now down roughly 6% on the year. Its peers saw similar moves, including CrowdStrike.
Performance of Global X cybersecurity ETF versus S&P 500 over past one-year period.
Magoon said expectations may have become too high in cybersecurity, and with a crowding effect among investors, solid results were not enough to to push stocks higher. But the down-and-then-back-up 2026 for the sector is also a reminder that when stocks fall sharply in a short period of time, opportunity may knock.
“Once you’re down over 10% in some of these subsectors, you start to see the contrarians start to say, ‘well, maybe I’ll take a look at this,'” Magoon said.
He said AI does add both opportunity and uncertainty to the cybersecurity equation, increasing demand but also introducing new competition. But he added, “I think the dip is good to buy in an AI-driven world,” specifically because the risks to companies may lead to more M&A in cyber names that benefits the stocks.
For now, investors may look for opportunity on the margins rather than rush back into beaten-up tech names. “I think investors are still going to remain underweight software,” Thill said.
But Magoon advises investors to at least take the reminder to keep an eye on niches in the market during pronounced downturns. “The best-performing are often the least bought and do the best over the next 12 months versus late-in-the-game piling on,” he said.
While that may have been a mindset that worked against the last investors into cybersecurity and enterprise software in mid-2025 when the negative sentiment started building, at least for now, it’s started working for the stocks in the sector again.
Meanwhile, this year’s biggest winner is also a good example of what can be an extended trade in either a bullish or bearish direction. Last year, institutional ownership of energy was at multi-year lows, Magoon said, referencing Bank of America data. “Reverse sentiment can be a great indicator,” he said.
But he cautioned that any selective buying of stocks that have dipped does have to contend with the risk that there is a potentially bigger drawdown in the market yet to come in 2026. That is because midterm election years historically have been marked by large drawdowns. “If you think it is bad right now, it could get a lot worse,” Magoon said. But he added that there’s a silver-lining in that data, too, for the patient investor. The market has posted very strong 12-month returns after midterm election drawdowns end. So, for investors with a longer-term time horizon and no need for short-term liquidity, Magoon said, “stick in there.”
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New innovation in the exchange-traded fund industry could come at a cost to investors during extreme conditions.
According to MFS Investment Management’s Jamie Harrison, ETFs involved in increasingly complex derivatives and less transparent markets may be in uncharted territory when it comes to violent downturns.
“Those would be something that you’d want to keep an eye on as volatility ramps up,” the firm’s head of ETF capital markets told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “As innovation continues to increase at a rapid pace within the ETF wrapper, [it’s] definitely something that we advise our clients to be really front-footed about… Lack of transparency could absolutely be an issue if we’re going to start seeing some deep sell-offs.”
His firm has been around since 1924 and is known for inventing the open-end mutual fund. Last year, ETF.com named MFS Investment Management as the best new ETF issuer.
“It’s important to do due diligence on the portfolio,” he said. “Having a firm that has deep partnerships, deep bench of subject matter experts that plays with the A-team in terms of the Street and liquidity providers available [are] super important.”
Liquidity as the real issue?
Harrison suggested the real issue is liquidity, particularly during a steep sell-off.
“We’ve all seen the news and the headlines around potential private credit ETFs. That picture becomes much more murky,” he added. “It’s up to advisors, to investors [and] to clients to really dig in and look under the hood and engage with their issuers.”
He noted investors will have to ask some tough questions.
“What does this look like in a 20% drawdown? How does this liquidity facility work? Am I going to be able to get in? Am I going to be able to get out? And if I’m able to get out, am I able to get out at a price that’s tight to NAV [net asset value], and what’s the infrastructure at your shop in terms of managing that consideration for me,” said Harrison.
Amplify ETFs’ Christian Magoon is also concerned about these newer ETF strategies could weather a monster drawdown. He listed private credit as a red flag.
“If your ETF owns private credit, I think it’s worth taking a look at, kind of what the standards are around liquidity and how that ETF is trading, because that should be a bit of a mismatch between the trading pace of ETFs and the underlying asset,” the firm’s CEO said in the same interview.
Magoon also highlighted potential issues surrounding equity-linked notes. The notes provide fixed income security while offering potentially higher returns linked to stocks or equity indexes.
“Those could potentially be in stress due to redemptions and the underlying credit risk. That’s another kind of unique derivative,” Magoon said. “I would very closely look at any ETF that has equity-linked notes should we get into a major drawdown or there be a contagion in private credit or something related to the banking system.”
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